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Start Over Genres Oral Histories Collection Tidewater Stories

1. Alex Fella (1:25:53)

Date:
2022-05-10
Main contributors:
Wood, Adrian (Interviewer)
Summary:
Alexander Fella is a professor of Anthropology at Christopher Newport University. This conversation focuses on Fella’s writing and research on rent, section eight housing vouchers, evictions and home ownership in Norfolk.

2. Ann Creasy (03:20)

Date:
2023-06-17
Main contributors:
Wu, Katie (Interviewer)
Summary:
Ann Creasy lived in the Lambert’s Point/Park Place area while a student at Old Dominion University from 2011 to 2015. She describes sweeping her front porch to remove coal dust and prevent tracking it into her home. In this testimony, Creasy, who works for the Sierra Club on local environmental justice issues, also discusses spending time at the Whitehurst Beach near the coal piers as a student and seeing coal on the park benches and in the sand.

3. Antipas Harris (54:53)

Date:
2022-06-15
Main contributors:
Wood, Adrian (Interviewer)
Summary:
Antipas Harris is a community leader with the Urban Renewal Center, a faith-led community organization. Harris discusses his experiences working at a homeless shelter in Norfolk, including the impacts of flooding on people experiencing homelessness in the city. Harris reflects on his role as a faith leader and the changing nature of the city.

4. Billy Mercury, Lathaniel Kirts, and Malcolm Jones (1:34:55)

Date:
2023-06-30
Main contributors:
Wood, Adrian (Interviewer)
Summary:
Billy Mercury, Lathaniel Kirts and Malcolm Jones grew up in the Park Place neighborhood of Norfolk in the 1990s, a historically Black neighborhood. The three reflect on their experiences growing up, changes in the neighborhood due to gentrification, as well as Kirts and Jones’s time working in the Department of Corrections.

5. Carl Poole (1:05:32)

Date:
2023-07-21
Main contributors:
Wu, Katie (Interviewer)
Summary:
Carl Poole was born in Germany in 1975 where his mother was stationed with the U.S. Army, and spent most of his childhood in Virginia before returning again as an adult. Poole’s great-aunt, aunt, and cousins grew up in Lambert’s Point in Norfolk, and he recalls seeing coal dust on the exterior of their houses as a child. Poole began working for the New Virginia Majority in 2022 on environmental justice advocacy. Track 1: In this June 2023 testimony, Poole reflects on his year working at the Wastewater Treatment Plant, 15 yards away from the Norfolk Southern Coal Yard in Lambert’s Point, and the impact the dust had on him on a daily basis. This testimony includes descriptions of his cousins’ experiences with bronchitis. He also mentions how residents of Lambert’s Point were displaced through eminent domain when the city of Norfolk built a water reservoir, and how the community has been neglected in city services, including street cleaning. Poole describes gentrification caused by Old Dominion University, and reflects upon how residents in the area have not felt heard on issues of environmental hazards or housing justice. Track 2: This oral history traces Poole’s family history, including his grandmother’s experience raising seven children in Norfolk’s public housing, many of whom went on to attend college and start businesses in the area. Poole discusses the white-led campaigns resisting integration in Norfolk public schools in the 1950s and 60s, as well as the impact busing had on the Black community. Poole reflects on his middle school years in a majority-white community in Indiana, and his experience returning to Hampton Roads to join the Army in 1994. The interview includes discussions of the Obama presidency, the Trump election, his organizing work in 2020, and his goals for Black civic involvement in Norfolk.

6. Cassandra Newby-Alexander and Chinedu Okala (1:00:22)

Date:
2022-06-15
Main contributors:
Wood, Adrian (Interviewer)
Summary:
Cassandra Newby-Alexander is a luminary historian of Black culture in the Tidewater area of Virginia, and Dean of the HBCU Norfolk State University, beginning in 2018. Chinedu Okala is a celebrated artist and Associate Dean of NSU at the time of this interview. Newby-Alexander discusses her experiences from childhood to adulthood with flooding in the city, illustrating her experiences with historical context around the City’s restriction Black residents’ housing. Okala discusses the history of race in the US and the current political climate.

7. Dianne Davis-Wagner (1:04:30)

Date:
2023-09-29
Main contributors:
French, Haley (Interviewer)
Summary:
Diane Davis-Wagner was born Diane Davis in 1947 and grew up in Mount Herman, a Black working class neighborhood in central Portsmouth, Virginia. In this September 2023 interview, she discusses the psychological impacts of being barred from the all-white swimming pool and golf course as a child. She also discusses the experience of living near what she and her friends referred to as “the Holy Bridge,” the demarcation between the white neighborhood of Churchland and Mount Herman. As a young person, Davis-Wagner participated in civil rights activism with her mother, Helen Davis, supporting lunch counter sit-ins in Portsmouth. She witnessed Dr. Martin Luther King speak in Suffolk, Virginia. She attended I.C. Norcom High School, Virginia Union University, and Norfolk State, where she was one of the first graduates of the PhD program in social work. Later, Davis-Wagner became the second female president of the Central Civic Forum, which worked to elect Black local politicians and led the desegregation movement of the Bide-A-Wee golf course in 1987. She reflects on how her granddaughter enjoys the golf course today as an avid golfer. The interview includes Davis-Wagner’s observations on segregation’s continued legacy throughout the city and the uneven tax burdens levied on the city of Portsmouth today. Davis-Wagner also discusses how Norfolk State University has changed, and the impacts of the 2020 pandemic on her students.

8. Donquitta Clements (45:57)

Date:
2023-06-28
Main contributors:
Wood, Adrian (Interviewer)
Summary:
Donquitta Clements is a resident and advocate in Southeast Newport News, where she was raised. In this interview, she discusses the impact of coal dust and other environmental pollutants on her family’s health. She also reflects on changes to the neighborhood through the Choice Neighborhood Initiative, a federally funded program through the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

9. Helen Davis (1:16:58)

Date:
2023-09-11
Main contributors:
French, Haley (Interviewer)
Summary:
Helen Davis was born in Pennsylvania in 1927 and grew up in Portsmouth, Virginia. Her mother worked as a teacher and her father worked in coal mines in Pennsylvania and then later as a rigger at the Portsmouth Shipyard. In this September 2023 interview, Davis speaks about her experiences attending the all-Black Brighton School and living in a segregated city between the 1940 - 1960s. The interview touches on racial discrimination within the housing system, including her husband’s experiences being denied a home loan while he was serving in the Navy and working for the shipyard. Throughout her life, Davis worked as an advocate of racial justice issues, serving as a secretary for a Black civic league, leading voter registration campaigns and demonstrations, and supporting young activists’ work integrating the Portsmouth lunch counters and high schools. The interview also contains descriptions of the presence of the KKK in Chesapeake, Virginia, her memories of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, and her work on the school board in Portsmouth.

10. Javon Bennett (1:15:10)

Date:
2023-06-17
Main contributors:
Wu, Katie (Interviewer)
Summary:
Javon Bennett was born in 1990 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and lives in Hampton, Virginia. Beginning in 2020, he started working as an organizer for New Virginia Majority on food insecurity, environmental racism, and housing discrimination issues. His work allows him to observe how the coal piers in Norfolk and Newport News impact the daily lives of residents. Track 1: In this June 2023 testimony to the EPA, Bennett discusses how coal dust settles on windows, children’s clothing, garden beds, and cars in Lambert’s Point and the East End of Newport News. He discusses his own experience struggling to breathe during a hot summer day canvassing in Lambert’s Point, as well as the long term health impacts, including chronic asthma and bronchitis, and financial expenses that burden those he has met through his environmental justice work. He urges the EPA to visit these communities to witness these hazards first-hand. Track 2: In this oral history, Bennett reflects on his experience growing up in the 1990s in Philadelphia and how his experience navigating trash pollution and discrimination within his classroom led him to his organizing work today. After moving to Newport News when his mother started a job at the shipyard, Bennett worked on environmental justice issues and for mutual aid organizations with Tidewater Tenants Rights. This interview includes his reflections on urban violence, houselessness, food insecurity, and the persistent costs of coal dust for residents living near coal piers in the Hampton Roads region.